The Tragic Queen…

In eras weird with old mythology,
As if asleep, the fabled tigress lay:
Her wave-like fur in those faerie forests dense,
Her curling claws, like thorny bambles slay…

Yet ivy circling all the woodsey way --
The tigress' cry came soft and still she lay:
Forlorn, that selfsame call upon the meadows
Now a creeping silence follows, in rest she stays…

- “The tale of Kay & Gwalchmai” by Alexander Klein -

The sweeping meadows of Sehra have fallen silent, ever since its glorious queen was lost in the squabbles of human & nature. Having seen her from her early days as just another cub in the Rajbehra family - to the time she took her mother’s throne and beyond, she was one promising tigress that shone as a jewel upon the forests of Bandhavgarh, even in its worst days.

Having seen her last litter in every possible motorable part of her territory, our last sighting of her and her family was a long haul, with us atop a pachyderm up the hills where she had killed two spotted deer at once. It was about time she was beginning to teach her young ones to dissect the fur from the meat by themselves and we watched her call her cubs to the kill she was seated on.

We saw her as a cub playing, then fighting her brother and sister; we saw her growl on numerous occasions when she was injured, either while hunting or while fighting her mother and sister; we saw her hunt on those very meadows, we saw her get irritated with a langur calling out after seeing her and chase him up the tree-top, climbing almost half the tree herself and we saw her, a mother skillfully start teaching her cubs, the ways of the tiger.

One day, in the year that passed by, she passed on - a victim of those very reasons that make us – “we humans”, despicable. Our very need to satiate our loss, only by watching the harbinger of our sorrow lose – “an eye for an eye”, took away this radiant queen who was only emerging from her mother’s shadows as the true queen of the Rajbehra meadows.

Today, the otherwise howling wind on those sweeping meadows of Rajbehra and Sehra lay quiet; hoping another queen shall take her place and bring back the past glory of what we, in our opinion call the single, most beautiful topography of tiger landscapes in our country.

We don’t quite weep in the sorrow of loss… but this one lady was so deeply etched in our hearts & conscience for reasons known only to us; that our head shall forever bow, never forgetting, always wishing her peace…

May the queen of the meadows rest in peace...

07 May 2019, Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, Umaria, Madhya Pradesh